UK Election!

Sadly Brexit has been the Conservative’s undoing, and the correlation between Reform and leave-voting is tight but unexpected.

That’s the beauty of Brexit.  They will need to stand on their own legs.  It will be brutal as there is nowhere to hide.

Fantastic News. My tactical vote has helped stop James Gray from being the Tory MP for South Cotswolds.

“Labour have already said they cunning plan is to ask consultants to work longer hours”

Given that many of us already work beyond full time now, and that most of the Anglosphere pays far, far better for fewer hours, good luck with that one. This smacks of when Milburn stood up in the HoC and said they’d force all consultants to work 40h/wk for the NHS to which the general response was “that’s nice, what 8h do you want me to drop?”

(Anyone else lost the formatting tab but the way?)

Interesting to see how utterly wrong the tatical voting sights and the polls got it in my area (Sussex weald). Most said Labour were the best bet to oust the Tories, but LD were 2nd in 2019. I couldn’t beleive the Cons would lose votes that would transfer to Mr Patel of Labour. Sure enough the final result was Cons, LD, Reform then Labour 4th.

I suspect a lot of the more racist people in my area changed their vote when they saw the name on the ballot.

That’s very optimistic, and seems to ignore the evidence from around Europe where populist parties are gaining significant power.

compared to the UK where right w2ing populist party has been a majority government for 14 years?

“I would not worry. Things are seldom as good as the electorate hope for, nor as bad as they fear under any government. ”

Tend to agree although depends what position you are in. If scraping to live then the small things that governments do can impact you greatly whereas in my position for example the last 14 years has not made a lot of difference to me personally, other than pissing me off how vile the government are, but I am not voting personally because I want a generally better and more equal society.

Sir Winston Churchill, Frank Hester, Ted Verity, all the blue rinse racist pensioners, Maggie Thatcher ..can you hear me.. your boys took one hell of a beating..

Gutted by this!

Went to bed before the JRM & Truss moments. What a fool  was

“Great to see Corbyn re-elected.”

Binners will be pleased

Managed to stay up to about 3.30am

Woke up to Truss having been rinsed. Joy.

Also woke up to Mrs C spitting feathers at her phone – family whatsapp – dangerous ground on all things politicss. Her tory voting parents (God’s waiting room, small lives, Fareham resident Braverman voters I’ve posted about previously) and her sister doom and glooming about how the country is now **** and Labour is going to trash the nation. Instead of firing back I asked her just to ask what specific labour policy was most most worrying them. Radio silence since. You could of course read that two ways – typical tribalism built on **** all but revved up by the Daily Mail. Or……..Labour has not really managed to articulate policy in a way that would soak through to our thicker of skulled below average intelligence peers.

“Give Labour a chance. If they cannot deliver they will be out like any other parties before them”

We’ve had the worst leadership during some bad times. A different government isn’t going to resolve all of the problems in one term but it does need to give people longer-term hope to get a second term. I’d like to think Labour can do that but I don’t, yet. They’re a ‘probably less bad’ option Vs the Tories and they got in because the Tories were ****s not because Labour are what we need.

My concern is Labour could well be out next time because it’ll be very hard to create any real change for the desperate people in the UK within 3-4 years. And if they don’t and people aren’t patient a lot of the protest votes will go to Reform. I hope I’m wrong but imho this Labour govt aren’t going to (or be able to) put in place some of the more socialist values that could level off the growing gaps in society that are causing these issues and they really don’t have the marketing ability to engage people. To many it’s all just dull politics from them. Labour are going to get noisy Reform sniping all the way, Reform are part of the same lot as Trump and Russia and all that Cambridge Analytica type stuff, that won’t have changed. Are we past populism? Not yet.

I’m very glad to see the back of the Tories but I wish I could feel more positive about the next stage of all this. If I accept that people in the UK are no more or less resistant to right wing tactics than the rest of Europe, well we’re on the same path as much of Europe, just a few years behind. Rejoining the common market could help the economy and Labour need that but moves to do it would be playing on Farage’s field at a time when Europe could start to look less stable. Add a Trump win to all that and it’s a mess. So much is on France and far more is on the US now. The UK’s probably a minor part of it all.

Labour win in a huge landslide victory.

“Looks like the UK didn’t want Labour”.

:/

Ok so what’s the process for complaint when faridge gets to spout his rhetoric but no representation from the Greens with the same number of seats.
For the sake of sanity they shouldn’t be allowed to get more of the spotlight than they deserve.

@Drac

I mean, you were expecting that surely

And the supposedly local level polling data for my area was woeful too.

Latest poll had SNP hold from Labour with Reform 3rd and Cons a long way back in 4th. It turned out to be a tight SNP hold from the Cons with reforms a long way back in 4th. Tactical voting as it used to be might be dead as a concept is future elections are as hard to predict at a single constituency level as this one.

In all the noise, I’ve only just noticed Galloway lost his seat after holding it for just 54 days.  Nice.  Maybe not quite a lettuce, more a potato?

Labour win in a huge landslide victory.

“Looks like the UK didn’t want Labour”.

Those statements aren’t contradictory in a FPTP election.

Am I right in thinking the landslide was built on a smaller percentage than that scored by Corbyn?
All that tearing up pledges for what?

Yes. Labour worked hard to win over seats in the towns and smaller cities, rather than pile up huge majorities in the big cities.

In my constituency I was seeing predictions that the SNP would fairly narrowly hold the seat against Labour. In the end Labour won with a majority of 6,000, which surprised me.

Labour winning 37 seats in Scotland with 35.9% of the vote while the SNP came second with 30.0% of the vote and 9 seats (2 seats still to declare) isn’t a great advert for FPTP.

Disappointing how right wing the country has shown itself to be, the Reform voters have always been there, Johnson et al just enabled them to come out of the darkness. I don’t see a left wing let’s improve equality cutting much ice with this demographic, for them it’s all about blame others for everything.

Best we can hope for is competant gradual improvement which will hopefully calm down the extreme right enough to stop voting frog.

“Ok so what’s the process for complaint when faridge gets to spout his rhetoric but no representation from the Greens with the same number of seats.
For the sake of sanity they shouldn’t be allowed to get more of the spotlight than they deserve.”

They will because there’s a digital soapbox available to all and Farage uses it well – unfairly well perhaps based on what came out about LeaveEU’s campaign.
It’s my point about Reform and how they use data and marketing… that’s where politics is now and only Farage, Trump and the Tories have grasped it. There is no reason why the same tactics can’t work to get across alternative messages and support policies that can actually make a difference, combat the Daily Mail BS etc. Well, one reason is ‘you can’t use reason to get someone out of a position they didn’t use reason to get into’ .. but still it seems a fairly one-sided battle there.

This is where I believe Labour are weak and behind the times. I was a member for a few years and I still get their communications. In that area they’re fairly hopeless imho.

Edit, having said that ^ this is also true –
“Labour worked hard to win over seats in the towns and smaller cities”
They were very active locally here, I spoke to 2 councillors and another canvasser on our doorstep in recent weeks. None of the other party reps called when we were in.

Yep , agreed. Reform down here got something like 9000 votes , against the Tories winner with 12,800. Different weather on the day and less feel good factors could have seen it closer than that.

And lost more to reform and greens at either end of their support but critically gained from Tories/SNP where it “mattered” resulting in seats

Bears out the theory that to win you’ve got to win the centre (right). Bigger % gets you **** all

Yes, the nuance of the requirement to ‘play the system’ in FPTP that both the Lib Dems and Labour have demonstrated so well this election is lost on some. I’m not saying it’s how it should be but a party that’s played a savvy game will not look as great on the national vote. In many ways, Labour putting in minimum hours on seats where the Lib Dems had a better chance of knocking out a tory not only saved resources but did them a favour in terms of killing off the tories.

Conversely reform were naive. They managed to scratch the racist itch in a lot of constituency underbellies but that didn’t convert to seats. Unless of course it was a super clever tactic – no better way to promote a ‘the system is against you’ narrative that have a huge disparity in votes to seats. I doubt we’ll see Farage in parliament a huge amount anyway – he’ll do the minimum and continue being the Farage we know on GB News and the like.

I’m not sure Farage wanted to win. I think he’d rather have come a close second, bragged about how well he’d done then scuttled off to America to get whatever scraps the orange oaf throws his way. Now he’s an MP I’d like to see him get much less attention and much greater scrutiny.

Labour win in a huge landslide victory.

“Looks like the UK didn’t want Labour”

“Those statements aren’t contradictory in a FPTP election”

Absolutely correct – Labour got the biggest landslide evah blah blah with a smaller proportion of the vote than Cameron got and he had to form a coalition. I’m not convinced the country en mass wanted Labour, just that it wanted the current Tories out.

Personally I think a huge proportion of the country will grasp any straw going if that straw promises to make their life better or keep it comfortable if it already is – the ideology of the party is almost irrelevant.

Not even in power yet and a few of you are calling it a failure.
You could always have truss or curella running the show.

’m not in Wales, so forgive any ignorance here; but why really does a Welsh-only party whose maximum possible aspiration can be a majority in Wales (or even all 32 Welsh seats); have any real business campaigning based on UK foreign policy when practically, they will be completely unable to affect it?

Well it is, at a ge when everything is up for grabs, possible that, either alone or in combination with others, the four PC mps might be able to exert influence.  UK foreign policy affects people in the devolved nations just as much as it does those in England, why should people not vote on the basis of a policy they care about?

Influence at Westminster might not appear to be that much for the Parliament we are about to get.  But PC has  been up in coalition with Welsh Labour in the Senedd in the past and may be again in a couple of years.  It will be interesting to see how things work when the same party is in power in Westminster and Cardiff Bay, but that is another avenue for influence.

“To Kier Starmer and his new Government, I say this – the people of the UK have put their trust in you. It’s now your responsibility to change things for the 14 million people in this country that live in poverty. For the 3.8 million people experiencing destitution, fighting every day to feed, clothe and keep themselves warm. The buck stops with you.
There can be no greater priority for your administration than ending the moral stain on this nation that is poverty”

John Bird, quoted by The Big Issue.

Yep. That.

Let’s hope that Ellie Chowns in North Herefordshire will be a more effective MP than she was a county councillor.

We’ve had an accounts payables clerk leave recently – wonder if Liz is interested.

Disappointing but unsurprising to see that the population still does not grasp that the earth, its protection, support, care and repair should be number one above everything else, because it is our life support system.

then scuttled off to America to get whatever scraps the orange oaf throws his way

Being an MP won’t damage his media worth in the USA, he’ll be on their TVs lots this Autumn. He’ll turn up in parliament when it suits him, and will do little if anything in his constituency.

If Trump wins, he’ll have a very happy supporter echoing his policies in the UK parliament at key moments.

“Great to see Corbyn re-elected.”
Binners will be pleased

Yep, Corbyn is now father of the house accompanied by Abbot as mother of the house.

Rumours of a child were nonsense… oh, you said “house”.

Not even in power yet and a few of you are calling it a failure.

I think it is a brilliant general election result on so many levels. Much better than my expectations yesterday morning.

Smallest majority etc

Starmer , McSweeney and the Labour team made it their mission to stack up votes in the right places, because thats how you win under fptp

low turnout, lots of apathy, muslim votes over Gaza (see the grim misogynist heckling of Jess Philips), Reform taking votes from Labour (explains Starners eve of GE EU comments)

with expectations & trust in politics so low, Labour have an opportunity to surprise on the upside, but they really have to deliver on

poverty
housing
social care
NHS
left behind areas, closed down high streets
and yes immigration

Farage will get even more airtime, the RW press will be relentless

It wont be easy

Much better than my expectations yesterday morning.

Same here. The local seat, Green seat count, Labour and LibDems and Greens taking Tory seats I thought unwinnable… even last night after the exit polls.

““The candidate (Caedewyn Skelley) made a point of mentioning Gaza in leafletting etc., which may have had an impact in an ethnically diverse constituency with a young population”

I’m not in Wales, so forgive any ignorance here; but why really does a Welsh-only party whose maximum possible aspiration can be a majority in Wales (or even all 32 Welsh seats); have any real business campaigning based on UK foreign policy when practically, they will be completely unable to affect it?

Fairly pointless statements to gather votes, rather than plausible manifesto-ing.”

Wales is in the UK and we send MPs up to the UK Parliament. I’m not sure why being from Wales makes Gaza any less of a pertinent issue for us? I hope I’ve read the comment wrong but it sounds a little patronising a bit “there-there Wales, leave the international stuff to the big boys in England”?